Russia and the wassenaar arrangement: A new multilateral export control regime for conventional weapons and dual-use items

LAiring the post-World-War-II years, the policies of export control over conventional weapons, military hardware, and items used for their development were evolving as elements of national security in the Cold War, both in the United States and the Soviet Union. Concerned with the possible ramifications of nuclear war, capable of destroying life on Earth, nuclear powers managed to overcome disagreements and enact the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), aimed at restraining the spread of nuclear weapons and technologies and limiting the number of nuclear states. The trade of conventional weapons and sensitive dual-use technologies, however, remained hostage to, and a tool of, ideological confrontation between the two political systems. With the U.S. leadership, the Western states formed a Coordinating Committee on Export Controls (COCOM) to prevent the transfer of strategic items and technologies of possible military applicability to the Communist Bloc. For the same purpose, the Soviet Union vehemently guarded its strategic items and technologies through mechanisms of its heavily centralized planned economy and security agencies.